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Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream

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Once you've read this book, you will never look at Abraham Lincoln in the same way. Bennett writes a polemic here, but it is a well-researched and passionate effort. Although some of his conclusions are suspect, I respect the basic premise of this book, which is that Lincoln was a thorough going racist. Bennett proves that Lincoln's political mentor was Senator Henry Clay, a Kentucky slave owner. Lincoln exhibited racist speech using the pejorative for "Negro" up until the last days of his life. He consistently frequented "black face" comedy shows that denigrated blacks in stereotypical ways. Lincoln always supported fugitive slave laws in Illinois and nationally. The Lincoln described by Bennett completely missed the concept of full emancipation for all African Americans. His lukewarm Emancipation Proclamation was only an attempt to stave off the radical abolitionists who were pressing for full freedom for all Black Americans. Lincoln's Proclamation promised to emancipate blacks in areas currently in rebellion (in which Lincoln had no jurisdiction), and did not emancipate slaves in the areas that had not seceded or were militarily re-occupied. It was a halfway measure designed to obfuscate Lincoln's true agenda, i.e., gradual emancipation and/or deportation for colonization of the native born African American population. Bennett does a credible job showing that Lincoln's speeches, including the Gettysburg Address, were high sounding but did not include African Americans in the great American ideal of freedom for all. "All men are created equal" did not include blacks until Lincoln had been assassinated and was not able to obstruct the final version of the thirteenth amendment. Eye-opening commentary includes a discussion of how Lincoln pursued the War for two years with pro-slavery Democrat generals like McClellan, Halleck and Pope. Certainly Lincoln's incompetence was responsible for extending the War, causing loss of life for over 650,000 Americans North and South. After reading Bennett, Lincoln comes across as ambitious, indecisive, manipulative, misguided, decidedly racist and desperately craving some kind of long lasting historical legacy. Lincoln was slow coming to grips with the true nature of the War. Lincoln maintained all along that this War was being fought for Union, failing to ever grasp the eventual importance of the slave issue except to use blacks as a political pawn piece to win the war. Lincoln comes across as Machiavellian and insensitive when he finally issues the Emancipation Proclamation only as a military strategy to keep England and France out of the War. However, Bennett fails to address the impact of Lincoln`s call for 75,000 volunteers after he had successfully maneuvered the South into firing on Sumter. Before his call for the 75,000, Virginia and North Carolina had not seceded and were not predisposed to go out. By his actions, he forced these states out and then proceeded to ineptly preside over a botched, bloody, protracted war that could have been averted by more clear headed, adroit diplomacy before the initial Battle of Manassas. Manassas led to Shiloh and, by then, the need to justify somehow the already horrific loss of life. Certainly, once the eleven states seceded, it was the effective end of American slavery because then the slaves could escape across international borders. A slave in Mississippi, once into Indiana, would have been free from pursuit, thus signaling the ultimate demise of the slave system. Lincoln's myopia regarding this key point precipitated not only the war deaths of so many Americans, but also set in motion the raw emotions and scapegoating that marked the brutal "reconstruction" of the South. The pursuit of the war and reconstruction only exascerbated racist feelings that whites felt toward blacks and necessitated the Civil Rights marches led by leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. almost a century after this sad period in American history. Americans today are still dealing with the issues that Lincoln did not deal with during his tenure as president. Bennett's demonization of southern leaders like Robert E. Lee show his lack of overall perspective as to why Southerners fought for their respective states. He doesn't acknowledge that in the South over 90% of the fighting men never owned slaves and were fighting for their families, homes and farms. The Union invader was fighting only for Union, not emancipation (if you listen closely to what Bennett's Lincoln was about). Abraham Lincoln was undoubtedly the deeply flawed, morally shallow politician as Bennett paints him, but Bennett interprets the results only as a twentieth century black militant. When you visit the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. after reading this book, you will read the Gettysburg Address in a different, less glorious light, and you will sincerely wonder why Lincoln merits such an exalted position on the National Mall. You will realize that the mythologized Lincoln did not die Christ-like for his country's sins. He was not the Man of the Age, but a man who was given the highest position in the American Pantheon because of his tragic death and the position power that he held during a catastrophic historical period (that he helped to make much worse). Another book on Lincoln that has been virtually banned for decades is Edgar Lee Masters' Lincoln The Man, which gives an equally withering testimonial to the man behind the myth, but from the perspective of a Copperhead. I'm giving Forced into Glory five stars for originality and the courage to write and publish it. This book is so "outside the box", it will probably be censured by the mainstream media. Many will speak negatively about it, but will not take the trouble to actually read it and give it a chance.

This is the most interesting book about Lincoln since Gore Vidal wrote his novel. Mr Bennett's Lincoln is not the familiar figure of Carl Sandburg's bio, but still believable. Bennett, author of Before The Mayflower, gives us a pragmatic, ambitious, scheming Politician. Lincoln apparently didn't care much for black people personally, enjoyed the racist humor of the time, and may have actually been a racist himself. Bennett makes a convincing case that Lincoln would rather have sent black slaves back to Africa instead of integrating them into post-Civil War society. This is a fascinating portrayal. The only reason I dont give it five stars is that I am not yet sure how to square this with all the other Lincoln books I've read.

Lerone Bennett has accomplished a feat few historians have tried, and at which even fewer have succeded--giving us a new perspective on Abraham lincoln and his presidency.

It is by now well established that the Emancipation Proclamation did not, in fact, free anyone--it applied only to those areas of the Confederacy over which the union exerted no control. However, Bennett takes this well established fact and goes much, much further. By adopting the perspective of the slave, he demonstrates that not only didn't Lincoln free anyone, but he in fact succeeded in postponing freedom for hundreds of thousands of slaves. Prior to the Proclamation, Congress had already enacted the Confiscation Act, which authorized the Army to free the slaves of anyone in rebellion against the United States. the effect of the Proclamation was to stop the Confiscation Act from being enforced--thus relegating every slave in territory conquered by the Union Armies to additional months of slavery.

Further, Bennett makes the compelling case that this was not an inadvertent failing (or a product of necessity) but an intentional strategy by Lincoln. Tracking Lincoln's history from his earliest years as an Illinois legislator, Bennett successfully argues that Lincoln never wanted Blacks to be able to live on equal terms with Whites. Even after the civil war was won, lincoln was still against freeing the slaves; trather, he wanted them deported to Central America or Africa.

As Bennett notes, had such a mass deportation plan for ethnic minorities been proposed in our century, it would properly have been labelled genocide (think of the Serbian plans to remove all Albanians from Kosovo). In other words, from the slaves' perspective, Lincoln believed in ethnic cleansing, not emancipation.

Finally, Bennett disputes the common response that Lincoln had no choice politically. First, he cites numerous private statements of Lincoln to demonstrate that he was, at heart, a racist. Second, he cites the example of many other politicians (e.g., Illinois' own Lymann Trumbull)who took a stand for real equality and emancipation, yet continued to win elections.

Whether you agree with Bennett's analysis or not, it provides an extremely interesting antidote to the Lincoln history machine which routinely labels him our greatest president. As I said at the beginning, one can ask little more of a history book than the ability to make you think about well established history from an entirely different perspective.

This book refers to the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln very often. There is a free searchable version online (the University of Michigan hosts the site)just search for Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln on google it's right there. Amazon won't let me give the link here.

Was Lincoln a racist? Yes
Was Lincoln a segregationist and white supremacist? Yes

Lincoln said in in his first debate with Douglas in 1858
CW v3 p15-16 of debate

"If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,---to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me, that whatever of high hope, (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What [6] next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not."


"I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position."

He also then said
"I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. [Loud cheers.] I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects---certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."

Abraham Lincoln did have a dream. It was a dream of slowly freeing the slaves and having them leave the USA. Liberia, South America a caribbean island it didn't matter much. If he had the power to do so that is what he would have done. Slavery was a thorn in the side of the USA. It caused other countries who had long done away with it to consider the USA a nation of hypocrites. Were there better men in Lincoln's day? Yes. I don't believe he was as bad as this book tries to paint him.

By todays standards, yes Lincoln was a flawed racist. How else should we judge him? Should we judge him by the standards of his day?
If doing that I would have found him not exceptional. He wasn't an abolitionist and he wasn't a future Klansman in waiting.
Many, many people wanted to resolve slavery.
It should have been resolve with the Constitution. This country should have started as a truly free country but that is another book.
Read this book and please read Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America
Read other books on Lincoln. Then decide for yourself who Lincoln really was.

Lerone Bennett's book seeks to deny Lincoln his rightful place in the struggle for freedom and equality. Lincoln's claim to being the Great Emancipator lies not just with his Emancipation Proclamation, but also with the 13th Amendment, which he insisted on & sheparded through Congress. Those who feel Lincoln was insincere about freedom and equality would do well to read LaWanda Cox's Lincoln and Black Freedom: A Study in Presidential Leadership, Richard Striner's Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle To End Slavery, and Harry Jaffa's Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, as well as Allen Guelzo's Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. Lincoln felt that politics was the art of the possible. His political artistry included an acute knowledge of public opinion(and prejudices) and a finely-honed sense of timing, and political discretion. Lincoln never retreated from emancipation once it was decided upon, just as he never affirmed black inferiority to be inherent. During his debates with Stephen Douglas he never said that he would never(in future) support equality. Again, a politician seeking an anti-slavery victory in a racist state. He didn't put stock in physical differences. In a well-known private memoranda he mused how anyone could be enslaved if the criterion was to have darker skin, or lesser intellect, because everyone was lighter or darker, or of varing degrees of smartness. In Chicago, in July 1858, he implored people to "discard" their "quibbling" about supposed inferiority, and unite around the equality of the Declaration of Independence. During his presidency he supported bills abolishing segregation on horse-drawn streetcars in D.C., for equal pay for black troops, for black witnesses in federal courts, for equal penalties for the same crimes, for the Freedmen's Bureau. He supported education for the freedmen. He had African-Americans picnic on the White House lawn, bowed publicly to a black gentleman in Richmond, welcomed(for the first time) an ambassador from Haiti, and met African-American leaders in the White House for discussions. Any colonization was to be VOLUNTARY and was later dropped, whites and blacks having to "live out of the old relation and into the new." He called for the vote for educated blacks and soldiers[a first step]. John Wilkes Booth was in the audience, and told a companion that that meant "N-- citizenship" and vowed it would be Lincoln's last speech. He was assassinated 3 days later. Frederick Douglass noted Lincoln's "entire freedom from popular prejudice" against African-Americans. Lerone Bennett's book unjustly perpetuates the misperception that reigns among many that Lincoln didn't really care about freedom and equality.

As I read some of the negative and uninformed opinions of reviewers in regard to a book which I found to be quite informative, entertaining and enlightening, I decided that I needed to write a review as well and defend the author for challenging the social order status quo as well as the dominant discourse on Abraham Lincoln.Unfortunately in this country, critical thinkers are too often dismissed as "stupid" or unpatriotic. What I find especially interesting about Bennett's book is that so much of what he presents about "Honest" Abe such as his endorsement of the notorius Fugitive Slave Act, his desire to deport black people and his love of racist jokes and blackface minstrel shows, are facts, which can be proven with historical documents, that white historians generally don't reveal. Cornel West is absolutely right in that "race matters". We need historians of color, such as Mr. Bennett, to challenge and "color" the perspectives of white historians who, for the most part,sanitize history for the benefit of appeasing their consciousness (or lack of one) and out of a desire to avoid dealing with racial issues.Robert Jensen, a Professor of Journalism at the University of Texas in an article about white privilege, contends that the only REAL disadvantage of being white is that it prevents most whites from understanding racism.This would explain people's anger at Bennett for pointing out Lincoln's racism and outrageous and despicable white supremacist views. Thank you so much, Mr. Bennett for your courage and sense of integrity in spite of the adversity that you have and most likely will continue to experience.

It is no wonder that some folks have such narrow perspectives on this bit of history. I was lucky enough to in 1973 have had a history teacher that taught us the truth about President Lincoln, that he would have freed not one slave if he could have preserved the union without it.

As my Pastor often says, "We must teach our children our history, and not leave it to others with their own secret and not so secret agendas". Thank heavens there are scholars such as Mr. Bennett that know this full well and go about their business of telling truth to power.

Thank you sir.

Book Review: Lerone Bennett's Forced Into Glory: Abe Lincoln's White Dream

The truism that personal interpretation fashions personal reality is apparent even in book
reviews. We believe what we want to believe. We want to believe what grinds our own
axe the best. Considering how easy it is with web resources to access any kind of
information, it is amazing that reviewers like Thomas Judd, who are quite taken with their
own importance, have not demonstrated the responsibility to look up Lincoln's original
speeches, especially the Lincoln-Douglas debates he cites, for their own and their readers'
enlightenment rather than parrotting some convenient "authority". Neither are James
McPhereson's flippant comments are of help to the prospective reader.
A further truism applies to Bennett's book: history is written by the winning side, and
martyrs are unquestioned heroes. Bennett's `agenda', in the present reviewers opinion, is
taking an important step in destroying a myth which historically has done more harm than
good, and continues to do so, for both black and white.
To his discredit, Lincoln was in fact a racist, both by 19th, 20th, and 21st century
standards IF we agree on a definition of `racist' as someone who holds one race superior
to one or more others. Such a standard is not affected by era. To his credit, he was
`honest Abe'. He flaunted his racism in numerous documents available to anyone who is
interested in reading them. His debates with Stephen Douglas (which obviously Mr. Judd
hasn't read) were widely publicized at the time, his correspondence with Horace Greeley
(and others) teems with assurances that he does not consider `the negro' anything but
subservient to the white in any regard whatever. This is spelled out most clearly in his
first inaugural address (...I have no purpose .... to interfere with the institution of
slavery....I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.....), including

the right of slave states to control their own internal affairs. In that same address, Lincoln
expresses his support for the Fugitive Slave Act, and his unshakable belief in `the sanctity
of the Union.' In fact, this speech was tailored precisely to the disquietude among
Southerners about developments in the North that had been underway for some time and
by which the South felt threatened, of which abolitionism was only one aspect.
Yet, if we continue to read we will find that Lincoln was indeed against slavery. He was
also against slaves. He wished to be rid of them. He was obsessed with the idea of
`colonizing' American slaves back to Africa or elsewhere outside the US. ("If I had all
the power on earth, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution [of
slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to
their own native land." ) Lincoln had been lobbying different sources for funds to buy
slaves and send them along with free Blacks back to Africa, or later on to Chiriqui/
Panama, Haiti/ Ile a Vache, and Brazil and, when these didn't pan out, South of the Rio
Grande. Not a new idea, as old as Jefferson at least who recommended gradual
repatriation. When Congress finally allocated a large sum ($600,000) for Lincoln's
`colonization' project, his problem was that neither Washington, DC slaves, not those
recently freed in Union-occupied areas of the South, nor slaves who had escaped to the

North, nor free Blacks wanted to go! Nor did Frederick Douglas support the program.
It could well be said that Lincoln was actually fighting a war to preserve the Union, and
get rid of the negro...at a cost of 650thousand lives.
As to why Lincoln vetoed the Kansas-Nebraska Act (which would have admitted Kansas
as a slave state), in his own words:
A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but
as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them
apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never
get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ...
(speech in Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857):

It is indeed an interesting queery to fathom what the outcome had been had Lincoln not
been assassinated. Would Black Americans have been shipped abroad by force? Or
herded onto reservations like Native Americans?
Mr. Judd recommends reading varied authors. Good idea. I offer historian Allan Nevins
who wrote: The popular picture of Lincoln using a stroke of the pen to lift the shackles
from the limbs of four million slaves is ludicrously false. And again honest Abe,
paraphrased: `I have not controlled events so much as events have controlled me.' An
important realization to keep in mind whenever dealing with history's "Big Men."
Georgette Sand

And we both know which side ends up writting the history we end up reading. The answer? It's always the side that wins. So any time we read war history that shows favor to the winning side, we have to do our own reaserch and make sure the history that we're reading isn't skewed a bit to exonorate the side that won (in this case, The Union).

There were also people from the North who were pro-confederate, other pro-slavery, others still were abolitionists. The Civil War wasn't about slavery but about taxing crops, livestock, and textiles from the South to the North.

Who produced most of the crops, livestock, and textiles? The slaves.

What kind of farms were the slaves in? Remember, in order to have a slave you had to afford to buy the slave(s), so not all farms would have slaves. The ones that did were plantations (multi-farms) of many little farms on one property. They certainly could afford many slaves to work the fields.

So if the slaves are the ones producing these goods, and they're being ordered to have these goods sent to the North, wouldn't that mean that the North is benefiting from the existence of having slaves? The ones that received Southern textiles, livestock and crops didn't want the slaves to be freed, because if they were then that would mean they very well might be out of business.

Now what about those other farms that couldn't afford having even one slave? This senario was the majority of the people who lived in the South. Not many people (per capita) had the money to live on a plantation and afford the price of buying slaves. The people who lived there just had to work the fields themselves. They might have supplied a small portion of their goods to the North, but probably not enough to make an impact since the plantations were much larger and could put out more products than a small farm could ever dream of.

To make things worse on the Southerners, the North had been taxing the South on its goods as an export. But the North wanted the South to stay with the USA and just let the North walk all over the South with over-taxing the people without the need to. Doesn't this sound like a the reason for the Revolution War, "Taxation without representation?"

Well I just hope that I opened some people's eyes to the true reason why the Civil War was fought.

I look forward reading this book, as it goes against what most historians say about Lincoln. It sounds like an intriguing and intuitive read.

I find it amazing that some people condemn this book for being "revisionist", as if it's a bad word. Sometimes, a revision is in order to correct the historical record. This is one of those necessary revisions.

Bennett, by using Lincoln's own words, lays a very convincing foundation for his assertion about the racism of Lincoln and his unwillingess to bring about the emancipation of 4 million enslaved Africans.

Sadly, even at this late stage, America is not willing to open its collective mind to the possibility that Abraham Lincoln was, at best, a political opportunist and not the "Great Emancipator."